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by skywalkersamidala
Summary: In which "Darth Vader" is no more than Anakin's playtime alter ego (happy Skywalker family AU)


**Written for Anidala Week 2017 on Tumblr. Hope you enjoy!**

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When she opened the door, for a split second Padmé wondered if she was in the wrong apartment. One of the sofas was overturned, a vase was shattered on the floor with flowers and water in a sopping pile beside it, and there was a dusting of pillow feathers all over the scene.

But then she heard C-3PO's distressed voice floating down the hall; yes, she was definitely home. "Oh, my! Mistress Padmé will be most displeased when she returns. Master Ani, would you like me to—?"

"Get out of the way, Threepio, we gotta stop the Sith Lord!"

"Oh! My apologies, Master Luke."

A second later, Anakin came barreling into the living room with Luke and Leia sprinting behind him as fast as their little legs could carry them. All three were brandishing lightsabers (toy ones, thankfully)—Luke's was green, Leia's blue, and Anakin's red. "You'll never defeat me!" Anakin declared. "I'm more powerful than either of you!"

"But there are two of us and only one of you, Darth Vader!" Leia announced, and with that she and Luke both charged at the same time.

They whacked Anakin with their lightsabers, and he gave a theatrical gasp before falling to the ground. "Curse you, Jedi, you've vanquished me!" he cried, sounding rather like one of the painfully melodramatic holodramas he for some reason adored and had forced Padmé to watch more times than she cared to remember. Though watching how unironically (and adorably) invested in them Anakin got was worth the price of sitting through hours of corny overacting, in her opinion.

"What exactly is going on in here?" Padmé said.

The twins' cheers immediately fell silent as their heads whipped around to stare in alarm at Padmé, whose entrance they apparently hadn't noticed until she spoke. Anakin rolled over onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows, also looking nervous as he saw Padmé observing the disaster formerly known as their living room. "Hi, Mommy," Leia said in a small voice.

"You've made quite a mess here," Padmé said disapprovingly.

"We were just about to start cleaning up," Anakin hastened to say. "We weren't expecting you home for another half hour."

"We were playing Jedi and Sith," Luke added helpfully.

Padmé had had an extremely long day including a very frustrating Senate meeting and hours of paperwork. She was exhausted and at her wits' end and a little bit crabby, too, and she'd been anticipating coming home to some peace and quiet, not a warzone. But as she saw her children (and husband) looking at her with matching anxious expressions at the prospect of getting in trouble, she felt her heart soften.

She slowly approached them and knelt down until the four-year-olds were at her eye level. "Well, you've forgotten one very important thing about the Sith," she said solemnly.

"What?" asked Leia.

"There's always two. A master and an apprentice." Padmé grabbed the red lightsaber Anakin had dropped and pointed it at them, giving her best evil grin. "And I'm afraid the one you just defeated was only the apprentice."

Luke and Leia squealed excitedly and took off, Padmé hot on their heels. She chased them in circles around the room as Anakin went back to pretending to be dead, though he cracked an eye open to watch the others with a smile on his face. But a few minutes later the Jedi got the upper hand again: Luke scrambled on top of the overturned sofa and launched himself at Padmé as she went past, and she collapsed (in a careful and controlled manner) until she was lying flat on her back on the floor.

Luke poked her in the stomach with the blunt plastic lightsaber blade, and Padmé closed her eyes and dramatically let her head fall to the side. "Yes! Master Skywalker saves the day again!" Luke crowed.

"Master Skywalker _and_ Master Skywalker," Leia corrected.

"You didn't do anything, _I_ defeated Darth Amidala."

"But I helped! And I helped defeat Darth Vader!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"All right, all right," Padmé interrupted, opening her eyes again, sitting back up, and planting a kiss on top of Luke's head. "Both my Jedi were very brave and noble today. But if they don't go put their toys away and wash up for dinner, they're not getting the blue milkshakes I brought from Dex's."

Looking horrified at the thought, Luke and Leia grabbed the lightsabers and dashed out of the room. Padmé stood up and dusted herself off before moving to sit on the still-standing sofa, and Anakin plopped down beside her a moment later. "Hi," he said.

Padmé smiled and leaned in to kiss him. "Hi," she said when they drew apart.

Anakin snaked his arm around her waist, and she happily leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder. "How was your day?"

"Long. And nowhere near as exciting as yours, apparently," Padmé said with a chuckle.

Anakin laughed too. "You're the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic and I'm a stay-at-home dad. I _highly_ doubt my day was the more exciting of the two."

"You run a repair business too," Padmé pointed out. Anakin had had the idea to open a repair shop with Ahsoka and some of the 501st who were looking for jobs after the war, and it had been flourishing ever since. Padmé had been in full support; parenthood had kept Anakin busy and fulfilled enough for the first year but after that he'd started getting antsy, and she couldn't think of a better thing for him to do than spend his days tinkering with droids and starships the way he'd always loved.

"True. I didn't go in today, though, Fives had it covered," Anakin said. "Which brings us back to you having had a more exciting day than me."

"Well, I was doing paperwork while you were off being a Sith Lord, so…"

He laughed again and bent down for another kiss. Padmé eagerly indulged him, and they were occupied for several minutes until—

"Eww! Sith Lords aren't supposed to kiss each other!"

Padmé reluctantly pulled back and turned to see that Luke and Leia had returned. "Maybe these two Sith Lords are in love and planning to run off together and start a new life away from the Dark Side," she replied, and she and Anakin both snickered as the twins wrinkled their noses.

"C'mon, Mommy, I'm hungry," Luke whined.

"We're not eating until you two help Daddy clean up this room," Padmé said sternly.

The twins whined some more but complied—although in reality, Anakin did all the cleaning with the Force while Luke and Leia practiced levitating pillows, their brows furrowed in such adorable concentration that Padmé didn't have the heart to scold their unhelpfulness.

That night, the twins stayed up later than usual thanks to a blue-milkshake-induced sugar high, but eventually Anakin and Padmé managed to usher them into bed. They still shared a room, though Padmé figured it wouldn't be long before they decided they wanted their own rooms. The thought was bittersweet; it seemed like only yesterday that their shared bedroom had still been a babies' nursery.

"Mommy, will you tell us a story?" Leia said once she was settled in bed.

Padmé smiled and sat down on the bed beside her. At least they hadn't yet outgrown bedtime stories. "Of course. What do you want the story to be about?"

"Tell us the one about the Jedi and the senator who fell in love!" Luke piped up from his bed.

"Yeah!"

"Okay," Padmé said, chuckling. She cleared her throat and began. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a teenage queen and a young slave boy…"

At first the twins listened attentively while she spoke, then less and less attentively as they grew sleepier. Anakin was sitting across from her on Luke's bed and fondly watching her talk with a soft smile on his face.

"…and because the Jedi Order forbade attachments, our Jedi decided to leave the Order so he could be with his family, and they all lived happily ever after," Padmé finished several minutes later. "The end."

"But didn't he miss being a Jedi?" Luke asked in a drowsy whisper; Leia had already fallen asleep.

It was Anakin who answered. "No, he didn't," he said. "His family was more important to him than anything, even being a Jedi, and he still kept in touch with all his Jedi friends, so he didn't miss it at all."

Luke smiled happily and shut his eyes, and Anakin bent down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Goodnight, Luke. Sweet dreams."

"'Night, Daddy. 'Night, Mommy."

"Goodnight, Luke."

Padmé and Anakin exchanged places and each gave the other twin a goodnight kiss before tiptoeing out of the room and gently shutting the door behind them. Then Anakin slid his arms around Padmé's waist, pulled her close, and kissed her deeply, making her hum appreciatively into his mouth.

"I wonder what they'll say someday when they find out _we're_ the characters in their favorite story," he murmured against her lips.

Padmé laughed and tilted her head up to look at him, then thought back to what he'd said at the end of her story. "Do you really not miss it at all? Being a Jedi? I mean, dueling a pair of four-year-olds with plastic lightsabers is quite a step down from dueling actual Sith Lords with actual lightsabers."

Anakin shrugged carelessly. "Sure, being out on the front lines of battle gave me an adrenaline rush when I was younger, but now that I'm old and serious—"

"For Force's sake, you're not even thirty."

"No, really, though," Anakin said, grinning. "Leaving the Order was the best decision I've ever made, aside from marrying you, of course. I haven't regretted it since then, not even for a second."

Padmé smiled back, heart swelling. Anakin had reassured her on this account countless times over the years, but sometimes she still felt guilty that he'd had to give up his entire career whereas hers had gone on relatively unscathed (apart from a few weeks of being the topic of HoloNet gossip when they'd first announced their marriage to the public).

"You're sure?" she asked for the millionth time. "You don't miss it even a little?"

"Well, I don't miss meditating or following the Code or dealing with the Council," Anakin said. "I don't miss the physical aspect because I spar with Obi-Wan and Ahsoka every week. And I don't miss my friends because we still spend time together even though I'm no longer living in the Temple."

"I know, but what about the—the glory, the adventure?"

He shook his head. "You know, when I first left Tatooine with Qui-Gon, I thought that's what I wanted. Glory and adventure. But as the years passed, I started to realize that wasn't it. That wasn't what I was looking for, that wasn't the thing I'd been missing on Tatooine as a kid."

"What was it, then?"

"A place to belong. A home," Anakin said softly. "Even though I was with my mom, Tatooine never felt like home because we were slaves. The Order never felt like home because we weren't supposed to have attachments. But here, now, with you and Luke and Leia—this is my home. This is exactly what I've been looking for my whole life. This is all I've ever wanted."

Padmé felt a lump form in her throat, and rather than responding she pulled him in for another kiss. She closed her eyes and got lost in the moment, marveling at how every kiss between them was still just as thrilling and wonderful as the first one nearly ten years earlier.

Eventually she drew away and rested her head contentedly against his chest, listening to his heart beating under her ear, slow and steady and constant. "This is all I've ever wanted, too."


End file.
